


Untitled (How Does One Title Life?)

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-10
Updated: 2012-05-10
Packaged: 2017-11-05 02:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/401457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We tried that whole running away thing, and it backfired right up until the end.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled (How Does One Title Life?)

**Author's Note:**

> So, ok, I had three fantastic prompts to choose from, but that second prompt, well, it just spoke to me. Jenny, I hope you enjoy reading this, just as much as I enjoyed writing it. Written for incandescentwings in the Great Blind Sassy Exchange.
> 
> Prompt: “I don’t care if this is nuts, and I don’t care if it hurts. I’m gonna climb this insanely high mountain. Watch me.” | _There are things you wish for before big moments. I wish my friends were here. I wish my parents were different. I wish there was someone who got what was happening, and could just look at me and tell me we weren’t crazy, that we weren’t being stupid. someone to say “I’m proud of you, and I got your back… no matter what.”_

At 18, running away seems like the answer to everything.

At least it did to Cas and I.

We took off to Stanford with nothing but two hundred dollars to our name and our most important belongings in the duffel bags that we had carried for most of our lives. Nothing more and nothing less.

Castiel had been adopted into our family when I was just five years old. He was the only member of his family to survive a demon attack and instead of trying to explain that to the cops, our dad just decided to keep him with us and raise him to be a hunter. Cas never said a word against it and years later, you’d still be hard-pressed to get him to say that it was a bad idea.

But when I asked him to take off to California with me, he didn’t even blink before he agreed.

So maybe he resented my dad after all.

Still never got him to admit it.

But here we were, a pair of teenagers, bound fucking determined to make it on our own.

And for a while we did.

We both got jobs, muddied our way through our classes, me as pre-law and Cas chasing down a degree in cultural anthropology, and just tried to ignore the nightmare that had been our lives for the previous thirteen years.

Then I met Jess.

Now, after all that my brothers and I have been through, I can’t help but wonder if Jess wasn’t pushed into my path by Azazel, knowing that it would take something like her death to spur me back into action. It’s a thought that I reserve for only my darkest moments, but still a thought I have nonetheless. Cas knows about it, but doesn’t say anything. I think he’s afraid of what it would do to me if that thought were right.

But at the time, Jess was freaking perfect and everything I ever wanted in a girl. She even generally like Cas even though his personality was screwy at the best of times, so that won her big points. Still didn’t making me feel any less crappy when Cas moved out of the apartment we had shared for the past few years, but he just rolled his eyes at me and said that it was no big deal and he would frankly be less grouchy in the mornings if he was able actually to sleep instead of hearing the headboard in my room smack the wall all night.

I had the grace to be embarrassed by that at least.

And it wasn’t like he moved all that far away. Just one floor down, to the apartment that had been recently vacated by our hippie neighbors that had always shown a strangely intense interest in Cas once they discovered that he and I were brothers.

So he was most definitely there the night that Dean came for us.

It was weird being on the road again with the two of them, even if it was only going to be for the weekend, but it was familiar and would’ve been relaxing had we not been so high strung at the possibility that our dad was really gone.

At one of our stops, a place up in the mountains, I found Cas leaning against the Impala, a cold drink in hand and his attention elsewhere.

“Hey, whatcha thinkin’ about?” Castiel turned those wide blue eyes of his on me for a moment, as he contemplated whatever he was going to say, before looking back at whatever had claimed his attention, but this time, he gestured toward the mountain range off in the distance with his hand that held his drink.

“I don’t care if this is nuts, and I don’t care if it hurts. I’m gonna climb that insanely high mountain. Watch me.” And if it had been anyone other than Castiel saying that, I would’ve agreed with the ‘it’s nuts’ option. But this wasn’t someone that wasn’t Castiel and for all I knew, one day, my little brother was going to make good on that idle thought.

But he didn’t.

Not even two days later, the apartment building where we lived went up in flames and Jess and Castiel went with it.

I lost the woman I loved and the little brother that had been around so long that I had forgotten he wasn’t actually related to me.

If they had been part of some clever ploy by Azazel to get me back on the road to the apocalypse, I have to say that it worked.

Cause just like that, I was back in the family business and I was hellbent on revenge.

———

But of course, that’s not where the story ends. Hell, it’s not even close.

I try the running away thing again, especially after Dean goes to hell.

Yeah, Dean went to hell. My big brother, my idol, sold his freaking soul for me, cause I got stabbed in the back by one of Azazel’s special children and all he got for that was forty years in hell.

So, Dean gets thrown into the deepest pit that’s probably down there by the hellhounds and I take off, go back to running and killing every evil sonofabitch that comes across my path.

But it doesn’t last.

It’s almost like the universe has me on a string and it’s trying to push me and push me and find out what my limits are, before it throws the two things that define my entire existence at me and tells me to fix them.

Dean comes back from hell.

At first, we don’t know what brings him back, only that it made it look like an atomic bomb go off around the place where Dean was buried and for me, that was more than enough reason to not go after it.

But not Dean.

That night, he summoned whatever it was that had burned Pamela’s eyes out at the reading; and a very large part of me wished that I had been there to see Dean’s face when he saw our younger brother walk into that farmhouse. But another large part of me is glad that I wasn’t, cause I would’ve lost it, remembering that we left Cas in that building to die, only because Dean didn’t know that he was one floor down and I was too in shock to remember.

But he was back.

And he was an honest to fucking god Angel of the Lord.

If there was ever a moment for me to make one of those eff my life posts, this would’ve been it.

———

I guess in the end though, it doesn’t really matter.

We stop the apocalypse, Cas, Dean, and myself; but we almost lose ourselves in the aftermath.

I nosedive into the pit, Dean takes off to go live an apple pie life, and Castiel, a fully powered angel once again, dives in right after me and pulls me out, much like he did for Dean. He puts my body back together, shoves my barely damaged soul back in, and dumps us at Bobby’s.

We take a few months to get back on our feet and during that time, we work somethings out between ourselves.

Like why I asked him to leave with me when I left for Stanford.

And well, when he puts it like that, there’s only one thing I can honestly say.

It’s cause I loved him.

Because at 18 years old, my idea of a happily ever after was five inches shorter than me, had messy dark hair, the biggest, most soulful, blue eyes I had ever seen, and could kick my ass with one hand tied behind his back if I even thought of suggesting that he go to class with no caffeine in his system.

So I did the thing that any cheesy romantic comedy character would’ve done. I asked him to run away with me.

I just never expected him to say yes.

Just like I never expected him to kiss me after I admitted that.

But to be honest, Castiel keeps doing things that no one expects, so frankly, I don’t see why I’m so surprised anymore.

———

We don’t go back to hunting.

Cas and I settle down in a small mountain town in Northern Cali, not too far from that place where he once told me that he was going to climb a mountain. I don’t know if he remembers that and I never ask, cause then I’m forced to remember that only a day and a half after that, he dies in the same fire that claimed Jess and frankly, I don’t want to go down that train of thought. It’s too sad and I’m tired of being sad.

So I turn my attention to the book I’m writing instead.

Yes, I am well aware that Chuck and those dumb Supernatural books are still a thing that exists, but what I’m writing has nothing to do with those.

No, this is a book about a kid, age 18, who fell in love with another kid, also age 18, and decided to run away with them, cause when you’re 18, running away seems like the answer to everything.

And if this story just so happens to bear a strong resemblance to my life, then so be it.

They tell you to write what you know and well, this is what I know.

———

_There are things you wish for before big moments. I wish my friends were here. I wish my parents were different. I wish there was someone who got what was happening, and could just look at me and tell me we weren’t crazy, that we weren’t being stupid. someone to say “I’m proud of you, and I got your back… no matter what.”_


End file.
